Weekly Overview Cables - Ukraine War Updates, Israel strikes back.
Ukraine War Updates.
1) Ukraine aid.
Congress finally passes the $61bn in Ukraine aid - it is now onto the Senate and then to be signed by President Biden.
Two things of note here:
a) The overall package includes a provision that would allow Ukraine to use funds from seized Russian assets to fund the war effort.
This is a first - and certainly had some political rationale behind it as well (to sell it to the GOP base: arguing that the future funding would not be solely from the US budget).
b) We have witnessed a significant evolution in the views of the House Speaker Mike Johnson: when justifying his support for this package, he said explicitly that his actions on Ukraine were based on him believing the assessments provided by the US intel agencies - the dire warning of what consequences would unfold if Putin was allowed to win.
That is a striking repudiation of the MAGA narratives and lies around the self-interested ‘‘deep state’’ promoting the war.
And when this rebuke comes from someone with ties to the strong evangelical GOP base, then that is real bad news for the Kremlin - which is actively trying to co-opt this very demographic with appeals to social conservatism and christian values.
2) Trump changes tune on Ukraine - supports military aid.
Trump on Truth Social: “Why isn’t Europe giving more money to help Ukraine? Why is it that the United States is over $100 Billion Dollars into the Ukraine War more than Europe, and we have an Ocean between us as separation! Why can’t Europe equalize or match the money put in by the United States of America in order to help a Country in desperate need? As everyone agrees, Ukrainian Survival and Strength should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us! GET MOVING EUROPE! [emphasis added]”
This is a striking change in messaging on Ukraine.
For the first time ever, Trump explicitly linked Ukraine’s survival to the national security interests of the US.
Of course he cloaked this support in a Trump classic of criticizing Europeans for being laggards.
(side note: and in itself, that is no bad thing. Indeed, these cables have always pushed for more European aid and have frequently criticized European states for a lot of talk and little action to back it up: not acting in a way that is appropriate to the true emergency that they face.)
3) CIA director ends all rosy pretenses.
Director of the CIA Bill Burns warned that without Congressional aid “There is a very real risk that the Ukrainians could lose on the battlefield by the end of 2024, or at least put Putin in a position where he could essentially dictate the terms of a political settlement."
This is of course very true and what we have been warning in these cables starting in late 2023: there is no stalemate.
With a manpower and firepower advantage (rising to 10:1 in artillery) Russia is a presumed winner if things continue as they are.
A lot of time was wasted on rebuking false claims that there is a stalemate and that Ukraine should negotiate given the improbability of winning outright.
This always ignored the second half of the equation: that absent Western aid, the fundamentals are on Russia’s side, and if no significant Western aid is forthcoming, then from Putin’s perspective there is every incentive to outlast Ukraine in this war of attrition.
The $60bn will change a lot this year - but the need for future and more significant funding from the entire West will nonetheless remain.
4) Russia intensifies covert operations in NATO states.
Increasingly brazen operations are being conducted on NATO territories.
Two incidents of note:
Sabotage plot in Germany.
German authorities have apprehended two German-Russian individuals, suspecting them of plotting bombings against US military sites in Germany.
The federal prosecutor's office indicates that these alleged activities aimed to disrupt German military aid to Ukraine amidst its ongoing conflict with Russia.
One of the accused was reportedly preparing for explosive and arson attacks targeting military and industrial infrastructure, including facilities used by US forces.
This individual is believed to have connections with the Russian secret service, highlighting potential state-backed subversion.
Assassination plot in Poland:
Polish prosecutors have detained a man alleged to be conspiring with Russian agents to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
For Russia, these are not only operationally important tasks - it comes with signaling that (at the time of militarist rhetoric emanating from western Europe) the Kremlin is willing to escalate.
And as the western involvement continues to scale, such missions are ever more likely to take place.
On the flip side, it will be harder to spread (or even sustain) the spirit of isolationism amongst the Kremlin target groups (far right fringes in the US and France/Germany) when Russian agents continue to conduct brazen operations on the western soil.
Israel strikes back: calculus behind a more limited response.
Slightly less than a week after Iran’s missile barrage, Israel hit back.
There are several things of note here:
1) Netanyahu choses to pull back.
The strikes were clearly smaller in scale, firepower, and theatrics than those conducted by Iran.
And this is a clear indication of a desire to de-escalate.
But why?
Why would Israel back down from a fight that it itself started?
There three likely possibilities here:
a) They were deterred from Iran’s show of force and a surprising willingness to escalate and hit Israel directly;
b) They never wanted a larger conflict from the very outset and the strike on the Quds commanders on April 1 was truly a one-off opportunistic attack, and;
c) They did want a serious confrontation and a longer campaign to target Iran’s core military targets but they had to back down because simply put, their hands were tied: in other words, Israel was forced to back down.
First option is unlikely - whatever ‘‘threat display’’ Iran achieved, it quickly squandered away by promptly declaring that on its part, it was willing to consider the matter ‘‘concluded’’.
In addition, we have previously discussed how the second option is also unlikely - Netanyahu knew that such a brazen attack would come with a significant response and that there was a high likelihood of this resulting in war.
He knowingly took that risk, because a prolonged conflict with Iran is not necessarily against Israeli interests: it all depends on how it will be executed and what will be the resulting cost/benefit balance.
Indeed, from the very outset of this war, a lot of senior Israeli statesmen have openly called for Iran to be targeted directly - including an op-ed by the former PM asking the US to help in this endeavor.
And to be clear, if the US was to help out in such a campaign it would have arguably been an advantageous campaign for both the US and Israel.
As these cables have previously argued, there is a strong case in favor of a limited air/missile strike campaign (similar to the opening salvo of the operation Desert storm) to take Iranian air defenses, air fields, ballistic missile silos/storage facilities, nuclear facilities and military-industrial production sites that play a key supplier of both Iran and Russia’s drone/ballistic missile supply-chain
With no troops on the ground, such a campaign would come at a minimal cost (especially if/when stealth fighter jets like the F-35s would take out the air defenses first).
(side note: these military benefits would come in addition to a range of strategic (weakening Russia’s supply chain/hand) and other political benefits too - for Israel itself, such a prolonged conflict would calcify the narrative shift that the war was now between Israel and Iran and would push the Gaza conflict further down the priority list).
But we shall not re-litigate this issue now.
What is clear however, is that Netanyahu calculated against this option - which leads us to the most likely culprit: Israel was forced to pull back due to external (US/UK/EU) pressure.
Indeed, in the very first hours following Iran’s attack, Biden called on Netanyahu to “take the win’’ (since Israeli air defenses performed excellently and Iran managed only 1% penetration rate).
This was followed with calls from the UK and Germany and other major states that called for a de-escalation.
It also didn’t help that the Israeli public itself was not really up for it either: 52% of Israelis wanted their government to not strike back - let alone pursue a major campaign.
But political statements of dissuasion were probably not the end of it either.
It is likely that there were additional concrete warnings that the US would not provide crucial tools of enablement for a future campaign: things like tanker aircraft assistance to enable refueling in long-range air campaigns and provision of munitions.
Indeed, the US was quite public in its warning that it would not partake in future response against Iran - let alone in a full-on campaign.
And so if this much was public already, it is likely that within the cover of private communications, the warning was even more stern.
Consequently, it is likely that Netanyahu was clear-eyed that he could not rely on reflexive US support - and that not only would there not be joint strikes, but that even a limited enablement support would also not take place.
With American support out of the picture then, Israel simply could not guarantee success in a prolonged campaign against Iran.
But something had to be done in the meantime - some sort of response was going to take place no matter what the US wanted to (not) see.
(side note: it was also wrong of Washington to dissuade Israel from retaliating in at least some way. There is no scenario where the US or any other NATO ally would choose not to respond to an attack that involved more than 300 drones and ballistic missiles - one of the largest one-off salvos in combat history. Failure to respond would amount to a catastrophic failure to signal resolve).
But one thing is clear: in spite of promising a ‘‘significant’’ response, the actual response was rather muted in nature.
2) Precision strikes: more with less.
Given the available open-source evidence, it is very likely that Israel used air-launched ballistic missiles to target Iran.
There are reports of propulsion system debris being spotted in Iraq.
As such, it is likely that an Israeli F-15 or F-16 launched a Sparrow or ROCKS ballistic missiles (both produced by Israeli company Rafael, and both have range of 1,200 miles +) from somewhere in southern Syria (and immediately preceding attack on the Syrian air defenses in that region further supports this interpretation)
Totality of evidence points towards the likelihood that only three missiles were fired at target, and that military targets/air defense radars near Isfahan (and Natanz nuclear facility) were targeted.
3) Signaling involved in actual targeting.
Target selection was very smart: striking radar sites involved in the defense (from aerial attacks) of Natanz nuclear facility is a warning that targets of highly strategic value will be on the table if further escalation was to take place in the future.
And the fact that only three missiles (vs Iran’s 300+) was needed to deliver this strike is an additional reminder of the asymmetries in the precision firepower and overall capabilities.
Message is clear: we have superior capabilities - don’t let pure mass convince you otherwise.
At the time however, the fact that the response was clearly limited allowed the Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian to claim (rather uncredibly) that there were only three ‘‘mini drones’’ involved in the attack.
Naturally, this contradicts their earlier assertions that the air defense radars were activated due to the attack.
Iranian S-300 radars are not tuned into frequencies to detect drones that fit a human hand (what they claim with zero credibility).
But such claims (aimed at primarily domestic consumption) allow Iran to get away with a non-response and end the cycle of escalation.
After all, there is no need to respond to ‘‘mini-drones’’.
Overall, it is becoming pretty clear that a further cycle of escalation has (for now) been averted.
But this limited campaign did already leave behind a wide-range of strategic implications.
We shall consider these next.